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Cleveland Clinic to unveil plans today for new cancer center; all cancer treatment to be under one roof

Cleveland Clinic cancer center artist rendering.jpg

This is an artist rendering of the Cleveland Clinic's new $276 million, seven-story cancer center, which will be located north of Carnegie Avenue between East 102nd and East 105th streets. The Clinic expects to break ground in late September and open in early 2017.
(William Rawn Associates, Architects Inc. and Stantec)

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Cleveland Clinic will soon begin building a $276 million cancer facility on its main campus that will allow physicians, nurses and other caregivers the ability to provide patient care and other services in one central location.

Clinic officials on Thursday will present plans for a seven-story, 377,000-square-foot facility before the Euclid Corridor Design Review Committee. The new cancer center will be north of Carnegie Avenue between East 102nd and East 105th streets. It will have an additional 19 exam rooms for a total of 126, and an additional 17 private and semi-private chemotherapy infusion rooms, for a total of 98.

It will be next to the Crile Building, providing easy access for surgeons, and will mirror the design of the nearby Cole Eye Institute.

Groundbreaking is scheduled for Sept. 29, with construction completed in early 2017. Funding for the project is coming from a $2 billion fundraising campaign launched earlier this summer.

View full sizeThis building will soon be demolished to clear the site for the Cleveland Clinic's new cancer center. Michelle Jarboe McFee, Plain Dealer

"We have outgrown our current facility," Dr. Brian Bolwell, chairman of the Clinic's Taussig Cancer Institute, told The Plain Dealer. Taussig moved into its current location, at East 90th Street at Euclid Avenue, in August 2000.

"Our [patient] volumes have grown dramatically in the past five, six years, both downtown and in the region," Bolwell said. "We're continuing to recruit physicians and caregivers."

More than 10 different locations on the main campus provide treatment to cancer patients through the Clinic's many institutes.

"It becomes a bit of a challenge," Bolwell said. "Having a new facility will allow everything in one location."

In planning the design of the new cancer center, Clinic officials turned to their Patient Council and employees for input. They also visited other top centers across the country to find design elements they liked – and didn't like.

One improvement will be an expanded front entryway and drop-off area. Another will be a spacious lab on the first floor, to keep patients from waiting in long lines to get blood drawn before undergoing chemotherapy.

"We've tried to be very clinically focused, from a patient's perspective," Bolwell said.

The new facility will bring imaging services and other technology used to diagnose and treat cancer under one roof.

View full sizeThis is a view looking northwest, toward the corner of Carnegie Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland. In the background is the building that will be demolished to make room for the future site of the Cleveland Clinic's new cancer center. Michelle Jarboe McFee, Plain Dealer

The additional space also will allow the Clinic to increase the number of patients it is able to accommodate on clinical trials, especially Phase 1 studies, which test to see if an experimental drug or therapy is safe for humans. More than 300 cancer clinical trials at the Clinic are currently open for patient enrollment.

Those and other features are all aimed at meeting two primary goals of the new facility, Bolwell said.

"We want to promote multidisciplinary care," he said. "And we very much want this building to be patient-centric. We want it to be a very warm and inviting atmosphere. The last thing we want our patients to do is enter a dreary and dark facility."

Among the other services that will be housed in the new cancer center are a spiritual support center; genetic counseling, a wig boutique; art therapy; and complimentary massages, pedicures/manicures, prosthetics services and make-up application.

The consolidation of cancer services on the main campus does not affect the oncology services offered at the Clinic's regional locations.

No determination has been made on what will move into the building now housing the Taussig Cancer Institute. Nor has a decision been made on whether the new cancer facility will bear the Taussig name.

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For 10 months, Plain Dealer reporter Angela Townsend and photographer Lynn Ischay followed 9 patients through their journey as study participants in Phase 1 trials at University Hospitals. We tell their stories here.

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